


Music of Color & String

by prettymacca



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, Ballet AU, Boys In Love, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fantasy, Fluff, Lots and lots of Pining, M/M, Paris - Freeform, Pining, Romance, Will add tags as I go, boys dancing, fliriting competitions, john is so in love, kind of?, paul is a sweetheart, you will see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 15:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12171876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettymacca/pseuds/prettymacca
Summary: The music mingled with the sound of choreography, and John watched as he whisked Paul away and saw him give himself to the music, splayed and pliant and trusting, so trusting. John knew he knew the music was going to make something beautiful out of him, an artwork breathing with life— while John was but a lone painter, with the colours of music staining his hands.





	Music of Color & String

**Author's Note:**

> After so much planning, writing, and editing, the ballet AU is finally here! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

_We were a strange love. To wild to last, to rare to break._  — Atticus

∞∞∞∞

 **** _The Painter._

“I paint with music.” He had told his teacher, once. She had smiled vaguely at him, and played along as adults do when speaking to a child— appeasing them so they would do as told, later. But the next day he had said the same thing. _I paint with music._ And the next day too. And one day, he had thrown the paintbrushes to the floor, and they clattered together. _I paint with music._ The tiles bloomed of pinks and of greens and he had smiled at his teacher, pleased. 

∞∞∞∞

The first time he heard music, and was aware it was music, he was so small everyone else was but legs. He felt it call to him, a bare page that pled to be painted and be brought to life by brushstrokes, and he had not known how to heed it. Not yet, at least. 

That was the first time. 

He felt the song cling to his skin and held it close. It lay in his arms, quiet and blank, if music could ever be blank, and the wrongness of it settled over him like a shadow when a cloud coasted before the sun.

So he made the song his muse, and danced, and it was sunlight spilled over clouds, splitting them in half. 

That was the second time. 

After that, came the third and the fourth, the fifth and the sixth, and he had made himself an artist with paintbrushes of songs. 

The seventh time, he was caught. 

Well. 

Not so much caught, as he had never felt the need to hide, but _seen_ by someone who should not have seen, who he did not know should not have seen. 

He was dancing, and the music was suddenly gone. A splatter of painting that ruined an artwork. His limbs fell and he looked up, annoyed. Why would anyone want to stop something so beautiful? 

His father was there. He saw the muscle in his jaw jump. 

The painting was gone, after, like the music. 

_Boys don’t dance._

_Why not?_

_Because it is for girls._

_Why?_

_It is a girly thing._

_Why?_

_Because there are boy things and girl things, and you do not want to be a girl!_

_Why?_

_Go to your room._

And the canvas was waiting for him, half painted into a beautiful new dream, and he could not stop thinking about it, _would_ not stop thinking about it. He did not sleep. He saw stars behind his restless eyelids, and they spoke to him, a chorus of soft voices and flurried whispers. 

_Finish it. Finish it._

Nobody knew secrets the way stars did. Or how to keep them, either. He asked, still.

_Will you keep my secret?_

_We will._

So beneath the moon and the whispering stars, he picked up his colours and his paintbrush and brought his canvas back to life. 

It was around that time, dancing beneath the night’s lights, that he lost count. And yes, in the daylight he had blue eyes and heavy lids, but he did not care. How could he, when he was painting something he knew was beautiful, even if he did not yet know what it was? How could he, when music gave itself to him and he sculpted it into something come from lost dreams found astray and wishes flickering in and out? 

One night, when the moon was but half a wreath of silver, someone found him. A girl. A girl who moved like a poem. The girl who moved like a poem held out her hand, and he took it, firm and steady and so unlike his heart. 

_Do you promise to keep our secret?_ He meant the stars.

She winked, and the stars winked back. _Yes. I promise._

∞∞∞∞

He danced.

He rose on pointe and elongated. 

He danced. He spun around and arced his arms before sweeping them to his sides and bowing his head. Painter of music. He danced, because the music was his canvas, and he painted it with the colours of himself. Sculptor of song. He danced, because the song was an angel trapped in marble, and he carved to set it free. 

The painter of song, they called him. Those girls and boys who danced around him and smiled when he did, because when he danced he smiled like the sun, and they were wildflowers swaying towards warmth. 

∞∞∞∞

He was leaving. 

He had danced to the sound of piano keys and the scratch of a quill, brushstrokes broad and splattering, but no less captivating. The woman stood up, after, and handed him a slip of paper, all sleek and glossy. 

He turned it around.

_Paris. 1_ _ st _ _of July. 8pm._

Words embossed in gold, a caress beneath his fingers. 

He forgot how to breathe.

Her heels were the only sound that could be heard as she left the room. 

That evening, he stared up at the stars as they spilled on the night, and prayed for their help. 

They were silent. 

He did not sleep.

∞∞∞∞

He was thrown out of the house that morning, drenched in the colours of song, and so, he saw no other choice but to take the train to the city of love. 

He wondered, tilting sleepy eyes to the new day pouring light into the blushing architecture of his new city, if he was caught headfirst in a dream. 

And _oh_ , how he hoped not. 

∞∞∞∞ 

_The Marionette_

_I can’t._

_You can._

_I can’t._

_Yes. You can._

She let go of the strings and handed the puppet to the fingers of music. 

He was but a clumsy thing at first, rusty and disjointed, a sad little doll in need of polishing, in need of oils to soften the movement of his limbs. Falling and tipping, stumbling and tripping, sinking down, a rag doll. 

But the music? The music delivered, like it always would do, when he finally gave in to it. While he was but carved out of wood beneath his mother’s hands, he was carved from song by the fingers of music. 

So, he danced.

He hated it, at first. He collapsed in a heap of lace, once, twice, three times, and by the seventh time, he sat on the ground and refused to stand up. The music cried for him, calling his name, coaxing promises as tempting as cherry lollipops to a hungry child. His teacher was begging as well, and his mother, but all he could hear was the music’s voice.

He left the studio. Picked up his bike.

_You can_. The flowers seemed to say. 

_You can_. The trees rustled. 

_You can_. The sun whispered.

_You lie._ He told the sun.

_I promise. You can._

So he turned around, and could.

∞∞∞∞

He was a marionette, and the music his puppet master, pulling at the strings of his soul, and those strings were made of notes and chords and arpeggios, even, and they made out of him something beautiful. The marionette of music, they called him.

The marionette of music let himself be tugged upward and carried through piano keys and flutes and strings, and he closed his eyes. He was not a puppet made of porcelain, or one made of wood, no— he was a puppet made of song. 

When he spun into a stop and the ballad bit off with a twang that was met with applause, he smiled, wide and wondering and awed, too. It was beautiful, the story a puppeteer could tell with the soft limbs of a puppet. And he was as soft as could be, pliant and willing and beautiful, and there were no defter hands than those of music.

He took the ticket between shaking fingers. He looked up at the woman, saw her smile. He did not need to smile back— he had never stopped smiling, after all.

_Paris. 1_ _ st _ _of July. 8AM._

The sun beamed down at him, then. _I told you so._

_Proud. So proud._

_I love you son._

_You have made us so happy._

His mother cried. His father also. They all did, parents and brother and cousins, and he probably did, as well. The tears that fell to his tongue were bittersweet, but he only tasted the sweetness later, like the aftertaste of hope on the back of a throat. 

Hours later, his bag was packed and his heart was, too. He had stuffed it between layers of silk and lace and told it to behave. But when have hearts ever learned to listen to their owners?

He wept in the train. Bawled, really. Salt dried on his lips and was washed away by fresh tears. The sun held him, warm fingers, and promised it would be all right. _When have I ever broken a promise?_

∞∞∞∞

He stepped out of the train, and stepped into a dream. 

The city was a fairy-tale city, untouched by the twentieth century, or the nineteenth and eighteenth, for that matter. It was a city who had fallen in love with itself, where baroque rooftops shone ivory while cathedrals rose in gothic arches and the columns of Corinth curved along museums. It was a city of alchemists and consorts, of dreamers obsessed with beauty, of musicians; the wind carried the swell of lutes and the romance of the violin, piano keys chiming through the air. It was a city who had fallen in love with itself and the stars had fallen in love with it, too, and that night, he cried himself to sleep.

A few days later, in the dance studio that looked like a palace walked by courtiers dressed in lace and jewels, but was, somehow, not, he meet him. The boy who painted music.

The puppet walked towards the boy who painted music. Painter and marionette spun towards each other, locking eyes like newborn stars pulled to each other by something greater than gravity. They clasped hands, and the other’s touch was the spark that set them alight.

They were young and they were beautiful, and painter and marionette danced together, the first of many. It was fevered flesh and tousled limbs, rosebud lips and eyes of sun dust and poured honey, slow as their dance. Held by the painter’s arms, the marionette was not a marionette, no— he was the canvas painted with the colours of sonata and ballad and nocturne and by the hands of the painter of song. So painter and painting glided together until jars of stars spilled on the stretch of dark, until the dawn blushed crimson into the windows.

The first of many.

But were there is a beginning, there is also an end.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is going to be quite the ride. I hope you all will find every moment worth it. Comments are love. Fine me on tumblr @prettymacca <3


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